Studies in Ontology in Twentieth Century Literature

This book is a study of literary concern with ontology throughout the twentieth century. It consists of ten essays, each of which focuses on one or various writers’ absorption with the nature of man and his ‘being in this world.’ The volume discusses Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Milan Kundera, Eugène Ionesco, Albert Camus, Marguerite Duras, Toni Morrison and Nathalie Sarraute as reflecting ontological concerns These writers, although not subscribing to the Sartrean proclamation that ‘existence precedes essence’, did consider the related existential questions concerning man’s freedom and responsibility for his ‘being-living’ (in Stein’s terminology). Their works are symptomatic of modern man’s preoccupation with understanding the self as a source of wisdom.

These essays were written over many years and represent the author’s own findings and thoughts over that time, assembled here between the covers of one book. In addition to fulfilling that function, and their pertinence when they were written, they offer the reader a nostalgic journey to the twentieth century’s literary adventures and creativity. A new novel was born and the breakdown of the rigid distinctions between genres made it possible for a novelist to write poetry, and for a poet or playwright to explore a common theme with a novelist, while they all shared with contemporary philosophers an obsession with the nature of man’s being in this world. This book therefore throws light on the intellectual preoccupations of this era.